House of Lords Reform

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My oh my, democracy is a bit of a pain, is it not? This Palace has been here for 1,000 years. Eventually women were given the vote, and by 1970, 18 year-olds were given the vote. It took a bit of time. We have been patient.

The preamble to the Parliament Act 1911 had something else in it. It described it as an interim measure until the second Chamber could be

“constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”.

We have had plenty of opportunities since 1911 and plenty of manifestos—including from the Labour Party. I was elected in the Commons by the people in 2001. I had a look today to see how many people still in the Commons were there before I was. There are 33. All the rest, the vast majority—diligent, hard-working, decent people—were slung out. The electorate removed them. Some constituencies removed many in that period and some did so in pretty much every recent election. That is democracy: decent people removed by the people.

Should any noble Lords ever choose to go on the many parliamentary tours that I do, they may not approve of my explanation of the history of this country. Succinctly put, I explain how our democracy emerged. We had kings. They wanted to be king of France as well. Our democracy basically emerged as kings fought wars with France to grab a bit of France and then fought wars to keep that bit of France. To fight wars, they needed taxes and soldiers, so they got soldiers—or money for soldiers—saying in return, “We’ll give you a title. You can have Scotland or Lancashire as well as part of the deal”. That is a simplification, but it is not an exaggeration of how this place built up over the years, with a few scandals built in as well—we were not in the days then of DNA testing to prove who had the entitlement.

That has passed on down the generations to determine the laws of the country. It might have been good enough for 900 years, but in the last century we started to evolve into something called democracy: that the people choose. I caution against referendums. Extra questions should be added. “Should the House of Lords be abolished immediately?” I am not sure that it is in the interests of our sustainability to put that question to the people. We could decide each to fight our own by-elections with the people but have “none of the above as an option”, but there might not be many left if we went down that route. So the move towards democracy also includes someone winning an election on a manifesto and saying, “Here is what we are going to do”.

I put it to the House that people are a bit fed up with politicians who win elections and then do not do what they have promised to do and that people have voted for. It may not suit people in here that the people of this country have voted for the abolition of hereditary Peers and an age limit in here, but they have.

There are weaknesses in democracy, and people argue and say, “Ah, they voted for other things”. If we want the people of this country to trust our Parliament, it gets quite simple when there are simple propositions. Therefore, if there are alternatives, those alternatives have to be absolutely in the spirit of what was in the Labour manifesto, not washing it away and pretending or negotiating but delivering it or coming up with something equally good as an argument. I am not hearing those alternative arguments today: I am hearing special pleading. We have had hundreds of years of special pleading, and, for democracy, that is not good enough.